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The treatment of the prisoners by General Carleton, and the burial, with honors of war, of his old comrade under Wolfe, the brave Montgomery, savors of the knightly chivalry of mediæval times. When his officers protested at such treatment of rebels, his response, lofty in tone and magnanimous in action, was simply this: “Since we have in vain tried to make them acknowledge us as brothers, let us at least send them away disposed to regard us as cousins.”
Almost at the same hour of the day when Carleton passed through Point Aux Trembles, on his escape to Quebec, Washington having heard of Montgomery’s arrival at Montreal, was writing to Congress, as follows: “It is likely that General Carleton will, with what force he can collect after the surrender of the rest of Canada, throw himself into Quebec, and there make his last effort.”
With Arnold three miles from Quebec, intrenched as well as he was able to intrench, confining his operations to cutting off supplies to the city and keeping his five hundred survivors from starving or freezing, and Carleton preparing for reënforcements as soon as the ice might break up in the spring, the invasion of Canada for conquest came to a dead halt. The invasion of the American Colonies was to follow its final failure.